SOCIOL 41 Lecture Notes - Lecture 59: Arthur Schuster, Social Loafing, Distributive Justice
Document Summary
Types of tasks: additive tasks pulling power per person by group size in the ringelmann. Although a group of eight men can pull harder than a smaller group, or an individual, the average contribution of each declined as the group size increased. A rope-pulling contest often involves the ringelmann effect because people get in one another"s way (faulty coordination) A motivational loss can occur in a task like cheering due to social loafing. Social loafing is a form of motivation loss that occurs when there is no clear way to know how much individual members are contributing to the group product. Individuals are less likely to engage in social loafing when they strongly value the group and their membership in it than when they do not, when member contributions are unique, for interesting tasks. Disjunctive tasks are those in which the group"s output depends solely on its strongest or most able member.
